An ethical person - like a politician, banker or lawyer - may know right from wrong, but unlike many of them, a moral person lives it. An Americanist first already knows that.
Bankers and their government agents will always act in their own best interests. Any residual benefit flowing down to the citizens by happenstance will just be litter.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The Morality of Capitalism: Liberty, Honesty and Humility

In American culture there is one
persistent villain portrayed as the enemy of humanity, the perpetrator
of deception, and the agent for social corruption and human harm: the
businessman.

Whether in news commentaries or on the movie screen, the businessman
is presented as a heartless, greedy manipulator so concerned with
squeezing the last possible dollar out of anything he does, that he is
willing to destroy the planet, kill his competitors, poison little
children, and sell his own mother "down the river" if it will serve his
material and financial purposes.

The only thing that saves us from the end of the world at the hands
of these criminal private enterprisers is either some righteous
individual who refuses to "take it any more" or the virtuous hand of a
government agent dedicated to protecting mankind from those who,
clearly, care nothing for the common good of humanity.

Critics of Capitalism Want to Abolish or Regulate It

This imagery of the businessman's way of gaining profits has been
extended by many intellectuals, academics, and public policy pundits
into a general criticism and, indeed, condemnation of capitalism.

What can be praiseworthy, ethical or just in a social and economic
system that fosters people to focus only on their self-centered personal
interest in the pursuit of material gain with little or no thought to
the betterment and improvement of mankind?

The conclusion that many of these critics have reached over the years
and decades is that the entire capitalist system must be done away with
and replaced with an alternative social and economic system such as
socialism; or, at a minimum, business enterprise has to be placed under
the detailed supervision and regulatory hand of government bureaucrats
presumed to be concerned with and devoted to the general welfare of the
country as a whole instead of individual private interest.

I beg to differ from this interpretation of businessmen and the free
enterprise system in general. Instead, I would argue that a truly free
enterprise, competitive capitalism is the most moral and humanely
beneficial way for people to live together that has ever been stumbled
upon by mankind.

Capitalism's Premise: Individual Rights and Liberty

There are basically two way human beings can interact and associate
with each other: through the threat or use of force or by mutual
agreement and voluntary consent.

When have you ever walked into a shoe store looked around and, maybe,
tried on a pair of shoes, but when you decided to leave without buying
anything a gruff and intimidating character with a club or a gun said,
"The boss says you ain't leaving without buying something"? I doubt it
any of us have had any such experience.

Why? Because the philosophical and moral premise underlying
transactions in the marketplace is that each participant has the right
to say, "Yes" or "No" to an offer and an exchange.

Why does every person have this implied right to "Yes" or "No"
without attempted physical intimidation or use of force to make him act
against his will? This is due to the fact that the foundational American
principle is that every one of us has an inviolable individual right to
their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property.

Virtually every other philosophical and political system throughout
human history has been based on some version of the opposite. That is,
that you do not own yourself; your life and property are at the disposal
of the primitive tribe or the medieval king, or the social, national,
or racial group or "democratic" community to which you've been
designated as belonging.

That is the premise of all forms of political and economic collectivism.
You work for the group, you obey the group, and you live and die for
the group. The political authority claiming to speak and act for the
group presumes to have the right to compel your acquiescence and
obedience to the asserted needs and desires of that collective group.

Only liberal, free market capitalism as it developed in parts of the
Western world, and especially in the United States, broke free of this
age-old collectivist conception of the relationship between the
individual and others in society.

The modern ideas of individual liberty and free enterprise that began
to develop and be argued for about 350 years ago transformed the way
men lived and earned a living, and the ethical premises underlying human
association in society.

A new morality emerged under which human relationships became based
on mutual consent and voluntary agreement. Men could attempt to persuade
each other to associate and trade, but they could not be compelled and
plundered so one person could get what he wanted from another without
their consent.

For Americans, it is heralded as the fundamental principle under
which our country was based: It is held to be a self-evident truth that
all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights
among which are their individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.

Capitalism Fosters Honesty and Good Manners

As a consequence of this principle of liberty, in the marketplace of
the free society individuals learn and practice the etiquette and
manners of respect, politeness, honesty and tolerance. This naturally
follows from the fact that if violence is ethically and legally
abolished, or at least minimized, in all human relationships, then the
only way any of us can get others to do things we would like them to do
for us is through reason, argument, and persuasion.

The reason why the shoe salesman is motivated to act with courtesy
and deference toward us when we are in his store is precisely because he
cannot force on us to buy a pair of the shoes he wants to sell. We can
walk down the mall corridor and buy those shoes from another seller
interested in winning our business, or we can just go home without
buying anything that day.

The clichés of "serve with a smile," or "the customer is always
right," in fact are inescapable resulting manifestations of the
voluntarist principle at the basis of all market transactions.

No businessman is likely to keep his market share or even stay in
business in the long run if he earns a reputation for rudeness,
deception and dishonesty in his dealings with either other businesses or
his consumer customers.

The famous Scottish economist of the 18th century, Adam Smith,
long ago explained that the motivation for respectful, polite, honest
and deferential behavior on the part of any businessman is his own self-interest.
If he doe not, he may not long remain in business, as every private
enterpriser knows who had learned to appreciate the importance of
gaining and maintaining his brand-name and personal reputation in the
eyes of all those with whom he has dealings.

Such polite, courteous, honest and deferential behavior may start out
as the self-interested conscious and intentional attempt to merely
succeed in the market pursuit of profits, when voluntary and free market
dealings and transactions become the common and everyday way in which
people associate.

But, over time, such rules of "good behavior" become habituated, a
part of the routine of regular day-in and day-out interactions, until,
finally, they are transformed into the customs and traditions expected
in any and all human encounters, whether in the marketplace or not.

Thus, the practice of self-interested good manners and respectful
tolerance fostered first in commercial buying and selling become
embedded and reinforced as the general societal rules and ways of
civilized and "polite society." And, thus, capitalist conduct makes its
contribution to a more cultured and humane civilization.